Gwendolyn MacLean won first place for Junior Individual Performance, at the Alaska National History Day state contest. Her project was about her grandmother and was titled “My Language, My Culture: Edna MacLean Takes a Stand to Preserve Inupiaq Language”. She is in the sixth grade at Bayshore Elementary School in Anchorage, Alaska.

In June, more than 3,000 National History Day students descended on the University of Maryland at College Park to present their papers, documentaries, exhibits, performances, and websites on subjects of their own choosing. Their projects were the result of a yearlong effort to better understand history by studying primary and secondary source materials. NEH’s In the Field series captured the event in this video.

September 17th is Constitution Day, commemorating the day in 1787 when, at the end of a long hot summer of discussion, debate and deliberation, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed America’s most important document.